


seven seals

by rustyshiv



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Alpha Pack, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - Freeform, Gen, Magic Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 09:44:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5781100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rustyshiv/pseuds/rustyshiv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>the world does not end in fire and damnation. it ends when they stretch out their hands and allow fate to play their game.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>[alt., a four horsemen au]</p>
            </blockquote>





	seven seals

**Author's Note:**

> After two years with writer's block, I spit out these mad rhymes. I don't know if that's a good thing or not.
> 
> No archived warnings, but there are some things to keep in mind:  
> EXPLICIT WARNINGS:  
> \- one explicitly written homophobic slur (just the one), but about a paragraph or two about backstory of childlike homophobia (they are literally middle schoolers).  
> \- one slightly misogynistic, gender-biased comment, made by an eight year old child, stereotypical 'woman' responses to breakups. Not meant maliciously.  
> IMPLIED WARNINGS:  
> \- references to childhood trauma resulting in selective mutism, therapy, and child medication.  
> -alcohol poisoning leading to hospitalization.  
> \- child being kept in guardianship while parent receives rehab.  
> \- blood magic, nothing explicit beyond pricking of a finger, a cut on the forearm, and a brief sentence about facial bleeding.  
> \- violence is keeping with the show, but because I don't like gore, can't stomach reading or writing it, the gore I have written is like PG13 in rating, AT MOST.
> 
> If I've missed any warnings, archived or not, please let me know. 
> 
> And not that I consider myself any great wordsmith, but just the idea of this is a bit off putting and disturbing, so just in case, please don't put this anywhere that isn't ao3.

_… and I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder_

The world does not end in fire and damnation. It does not end with holy trumpets and a second coming. It ends when they stretch out their hands, and allow fate to play their game. 

The world ends in increments, in slow tar-like steps. They embody patience and cunning and mercy and justice. They are constellations in action; nebulas and galaxies pasted together by vastness and incomprehension, and humans believe that something so awesome and powerful can be accomplished in a mere moment?

The world ends, and the world carries on anew, and the cycle completes, and the seals are restored. This story has been told before, and will be told again, as quiet and breathtaking as lilies growing in a valley and a mountain stream trickling into a waterfall, only to trickle back to a stream.

 

_he went out conquering, and to conquer_

Derek stretches out his hands on top of the map in front of him. He's so tired, and more than anything, worried that maybe, this time, his pack won't survive long enough for their victory pizza night. Won't live past the age of nineteen, won't get to leave this place of never-ending badness and live. 

"They're getting bolder," Scott murmurs, sitting on his opposite side. "What's the plan?"

Derek wants to tell him he has no plan. That they can't win, they, with their pack of five- six if Peter can be relied on. The Alpha pack has upwards of thirty members, brutal and bloodthirsty and this game isn't new to them. This game was _written_ by them. 

Stiles takes a long gulp from his drink, neck convulsing as it goes down heavy. "We kill 'em. That's all we can do, frankly. And I don't wanna take chances."

Lydia hums from her corner when Isaac scowls at the thought. Derek often wonders if he misses the teenager Isaac briefly turned into after the bite, or if he likes this new, softer, gentle Isaac a little more. He doesn't have an answer for himself. Thinks that Isaac would have a better chance of survival if he didn't fear blood in his fangs, fur in his nails. 

Lydia is the only human, besides Stiles, who has stayed with Derek. She entered the loft one day wearing six inch heels and a deadly smirk, and practically claimed the territory for her own, an Alpha in every way that counts but for the bite. Allison left for France with her father, after a Fae attack that left the town with a curfew of eight thirty and more deaths in the obituaries than in three years combined. 

She kisses her teeth now, flicks her hair, stares Derek down in her dominant way. "This place _cannot_ fall to the wolves, Derek. They will kill everyone left in this town, if we don't stop them. Declare war now, and _stop this_."

"She's right," Stiles whispers, then gestures to the map when they all turn to him. "We're past the point of calmly dealing with them. They asked for blood, they never specified whose."

Scott's face is a battle of common sense and mercy, as always the one to ask for peace. But he cannot deny they've long been past that point. Derek turns to Isaac, turns to Scott, his gentlest betas, and doesn't mind the humans when he says, "We're training extra hard tomorrow."

The humans of his pack are fine with being ignored for now. They'll show up with the sharpest fangs and longest claws the day of the battle. 

⊰

The Alpha pack leaves Lydia's mother in the ICU of Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital. She's likely never to regain use of her legs. 

Lydia's face is a study in blankness, but when she looks at Derek, instead of the blame he was half expecting, he sees nothing but murder. 

"I was going to kill them quickly," she hisses. "Now they're going to suffer tenfold what they've done to her."

Derek can smell ozone and electricity in the air, knows that this will end in fire and blood and pain, and believes her. 

⊰

He catches Stiles packing his jeep with three suitcases. His father's somewhere inside, muttering to himself about cash for gas.

Stiles stares in his general direction, not able to make eye contact with Derek where he's hidden amongst the trees. 

"I know you're there," Stiles says, quietly yet clearly. "So listen to my heartbeat. I'll come back. But there's a ton of people coming in, like, from the military or some shit. This whole city's on lockdown. Evacuation."

Derek saw the news. Beacon Hills, in forty eight hours, will be a ghost town. 

"So I'm taking my father to my grandmother's house in Seaside, Oregon. He'll be safe there. In four days, I want to see you there to pick me up. I'm not leaving my home without a fight, but I also can't have my dad end up like Lydia's-" Stiles' voice cracks, head hanging. 

Stiles refused to enter Ms. Martin's hospital room, panic and fear sweat making him smell ripe and sour. But Derek understood. He understands all too well the power of memories. 

He makes the drive to Seaside in four days, parks down the street from the address typed on his phone screen, and waits in the shadows. He can smell Stiles from here, smell the Sheriff, and someone that smells like home cooked meals and fabric softener and years of domesticity. It's a nice smell. He can't help but envy the sheriff. 

Stiles' smell gets closer, nerves and excitement, and something darker that's been molded into him by Beacon Hills itself. 

Derek once got told by an elderly woman, kindly meant, that this town was no good for him- too dead end, too small. It wasn't good for young people to stay in small towns and never explore the world. 

Derek agrees with her now. Beacon Hills isn't good for anyone, but not for the reasons she thought. The truth is, Beacon Hills has a way of sucking out your soul and leaving behind hardened scars. It has a way of desensitizing you to the blood and the spit, every disgusting thing the body can eek out, or put in. 

He sees it in Lydia; he sees it in Stiles; he knows the anger will always be a part of Scott now, embedded in his DNA much like the wolf that runs in his soul. He saw it in Isaac, too, before he softened his edges. 

Stiles opens the back door and throws a bag inside, all his worldly possessions he might need, and then slides into the passenger seat. His gaze stays on the road, as if by staring hard enough, he can move them. 

"Drive," he mutters.

Derek drives. 

⊰

The Alphas have taken over the town, empty streets and empty houses being spray painted by animal possession, a type of stench that makes the werewolves in Derek's pack wrinkle their noses. 

The only house left untouched is Stiles' and Lydia's. Even Scott's has been taken for their own. 

"How's your mom? Did they get her?" Isaac asks, when they're holding their arms over their noses and digging through rubble for anything salvageable. Scott finds a framed photo of his mom, Scott, and Stiles in what looks to be Little League. Derek finds a ruby ring, and Lydia finds words written in blood on the top floor, _are boys like you scared of wolves?_ It's not his mother's blood. 

"The soldiers told her to bunk at the hospital. That's what they're telling everyone who stayed," Scott says, reading the words. "What does that mean?"

"It's from _Peter and the Wolf,_ " Stiles says, fingering the blood. "They're _taunting_ us."

"We need a game plan," Isaac says. "This is getting ridiculous."

⊰

"We can't go in half-assed, like usual," Stiles says with a grin that lights up his whole face. Derek glares, but finds it hard to be truly annoyed when it makes the rest of their group, with the exception of Peter, who's been absent for this whole thing, snort.

Scott picks up with, "Yeah, man, no offense, but for a while there, you were a _really bad_ Alpha."

"Like, actual crap at it," Isaac joins in, and soon they're all poking fun at him, until he shows a little fang and growls menacingly.

They all subside after that, cowed and serious again, with the exception of Lydia, who's staring at him knowingly, 

_You big softie_ , she mouths, and if she'd said it out loud it'd be caustic and prim, like she's too good for the words, but silent like that, she's soft-eyed and smiling. 

He winks at her, and that makes her suppress a grin. "Alright, I get it, bigger better plans, from now on."

"No, no," Stiles raises a finger in the air. "Not bigger, just better. More well-thought out, frankly. What we've got so far is good," and Derek knows they all have a shot in hell of winning, but if Stiles- cynical, practical, realist Stiles- is willing to keep up the pretense, they all are, "we've just got to tweak it."

"Tweak it how?" Scott asks, staring at the board, criss-crossed with red string a hundred different times, evidence of many sleepless nights Derek has had to host Stiles and Lydia through a research binge. 

"Leave that to us, Scott," Lydia says, red smile and red hair and dark green eyes. "We've got aces up our magic little sleeves."

She and Stiles share a look, and Derek only knows because Derek was there, but there's something feral about them now.

There's a ding, and the charged air is broken when Stiles yelps, "Pizza rolls are done!" and runs to the kitchen. 

It's enough, now, for Derek to breathe lighter, knowing they'll fight for their home, their territory, their right as wolves. It makes the sun shine a little bit brighter through the rain-heavy grey clouds. 

⊰

"Where's the zombie, Derek?" One of the Alphas taunt, ugly and sneering. He thinks that maybe she thinks it'll hurt him, the fact that his only surviving family member by blood ran out of dodge the second he could. It doesn't, but then again, Peter hasn't really been family in a while. 

"Hopefully?" He replies honestly, claws protruding and hurting slightly- they've been dipped in wolfsbane, after all. "Dead somewhere in a ditch."

"Same ditch you'll end up in," another Alpha snarls, and Derek's done with this villain-monologue _bullshit_. 

"I came here to fight, so…" he trails off, sarcasm inherent in every molecule of his being. "Can we get to that soon, preferably before we all die of old age?"

He has a town to get back. 

 

_it was granted to take peace from the earth_

She was born to be a lioness, this much she knows. Like the electricity running under her skin, like the itch between her shoulder blades she gets right before she has to scream, she knows that one day- 

One day, she'll make the world bow before her. 

It's no shock when she emerges from the coma with a mind too big for sanity. It's no shock when she emerges from the woods with the power to predict death. She's always been too much for normalcy; she's always known she was destined for something bigger than Ragnarok itself. 

In the fourth grade, armed with pretty pink pumps and a Miss America smile, she takes over the hallways. President of Student Council, straight A student, makeup guru and fashion consultant- she makes the students ooh and aw, and never lets them wonder about the new girl taking over their turf. 

In middle school, after Danny comes out and the whole school finds out about it, she casts her rightful vengeance on every homophobic child that sees fit to antagonize him. Rumors get started of pubic lice, hair falls out from bad chemical reactions, skin inexplicably turns purple, students get accused of stink bombs or get caught with a BB gun in their backpacks and a black list filled with random teachers, subsequently getting expelled for weapons on campus. 

The message is clear: accept his sexuality, and happily, or you'll get a cherry bomb planted in your locker, and expulsion on your record.

In the eighth grade, she meets the newest addition to Beacon Hills alumni, Jackson Whittemore. He's everything her mother warned her about- big, brawny, with the worst attitude of a preteen forced to move to bumfuck, nowheresville. Lydia thinks she's seen more brains on a particularly dull _rock_. 

She falls in love the day he moves in. 

Jackson is quick to establish ties with the popular crowd, uses words like _loser_ and _bitches_ , and like any preteen, thinks blending curse words into _shitfuck-bastard_ is cool to do, but he makes a kid pee himself at lunch when he stands up for Danny after some idiot calls him a faggot. 

Lydia wants to take him, and mold him. Make him unto her image, some specimen of perfect alpha male for alpha female, leaders of the pack of lions that make up their school hierarchical pack. 

⊰

When she gets bitten, when Jackson gets turned, she's wild electricity, untamable and too strong for her own self. She cries, and rages, and holds onto Jackson whenever he reaches for her with twice the strength she once had, and Jackson says nothing about the bones that break and reform under her grasp, just grits his teeth and ignores her silent breakdown. 

It takes a talkative kid with uncontrolled arm gestures and his awkward puppyish friend, Stiles and Scott, the too-loud kids from the playground, the too-quiet kids in middle school, to help them. 

"He's a Kanima," Stiles says, and Lydia wants to growl. 

"Okay," she says with wide eyes that scream _numbnuts_ , "and let's pretend for one second I _don't_ know what you're talking about. What's a Kanima?"

It's a wolf with no anchor, with a dark past, with pain and longing, and the desire to belong. It's the only time she's ever cried _for_ Jackson, not over him. 

Stiles says, "A fucking huge ass lizard dead set on killing everyone by paralyzing its victims and then having its lizardy way with them?"

Scott says, "It's a mutation of werewolf that isn't evil, necessarily, just… lost. We're trying to help it-"

" _Him_ ," Lydia hisses. 

"Him," Scott repeats. "We're trying to help him before he kills again."

"Again?" Lydia gapes.

Stiles' face loses that baby faced grin and becomes blank. "Yeah, Lyds. He's been behind the murders we've been hearing about. Isaac's dad, that one mechanic."

Lydia bares her teeth, her human fangs and eyes of death and says, "Take me to him. I'll fix this, since you have proved thus far to be completely _incompetent_."

She fixes it, and because she's always known what's best for her own pack, she lets him go to London, lets her alpha male mate leave for therapy and the chance to leave Beacon Hills forever. 

Jackson looks at her in the airport, says, "You could come with me," and it's the softest Lydia has ever heard him sound, the most vulnerable he's ever been, and they took each other's virginity, so that's saying something. 

"I can't," she whispers, holds onto his hand hard, too hard- bones grind and break and Jackson grits his teeth. 

"This town will _kill_ you, Lydia." Jackson hisses, angry and hurt again. "You will die here, they all will, and I won't let you follow those idiots into a _grave_."

She reaches for his face, to hold his cheek, but he pulls back, scowls. She snaps too, grabs his chin with nails like claws, sharpened into human points by a nail file, because she's never needed to be a werewolf to be a predator. 

"Listen to me," she growls, and Jackson flares his new baby blue electric wolf eyes in impatience, but calms at her glare. Derek might've bitten him, but Jackson's only ever had one alpha. "This is my town. My _home_. If you think I'll fight for it just to end up dead, you don't know me at all. I plan on being the last one standing, the _victor_ in this fucked up teen movie. So you go to London and get better, start a new life; you're right, this place will end up washed in blood. You can escape this life. But me? I have to protect it."

"But why?" Jackson asks. 

Lydia looks down, lets go of his face, sighs heavily. "Because, this town had lions long before McCall got bit by wolves." She looks up at him. "Do you understand? This is my home," she says, and means _this is my territory_. 

Jackson nods in defeat, and their last kiss tastes like sorrow, and forgetfulness, and an alpha letting her mate go.

⊰

She gets kidnapped by a Druid gone rogue, gets taken to the world between worlds, the other. 

She gets fed every delicacy, gets dressed in the finest silks; her home is one of the most expensive in the Court. Her shackles are spun from the finest gold of the valley.

They call her Banshee, and Morrigan, and _bean chaointe_. The Fae give her a choice, to stay and be a part of them, like the Banshee she is, and receive all praise, or go back to the human world. 

It's not a choice, it's a threat. But when the wolves come howling for their lost packmate, she hikes up her gown, steps out of her abode, and runs to meet them, fights just as strong as them, just as mercilessly for the right to go home, her real home. 

Her real home becomes a battlefield, a war-torn city, as the Fae come back angry and violent. They take the city and countless lives before they are destroyed, before Derek runs a pipe of iron through the Faerie Queene's throat, and another in one ear and out the other. 

It ends when Derek kills the Queene, when Lydia kills their Badb, when Stiles kills the dark Druid. The battle ends when the three tiered balance of power is cut down, and the Fae leave in a dissipation of mist, quick and quiet, with the eerie distant howl of a pooka reaching their ears. Their surrender. 

Beacon Hills the next morning becomes half empty, people packing and leaving. The news report seventy-three dead, murdered, in gang-related violence. The closeup is a burning building and a body half-hidden by rubble. 

She accompanies Danny to the airport, headed back to Hawai'i, five days later and thinks about Jackson. Her entire pack is leaving, and she can't do anything but let them go, for their own protection. 

The Sheriff places an eight thirty curfew, and grounds Stiles. Stiles shows up at their pack meeting three days later. He's got bags under his eyes, and scabs that'll leave scars on his face and torso. Lydia cuddles up to him on the sofa, needing the comfort, and smiles privately when he doesn't even get excited about her proximity anymore, like it's normal. She supposes it _is_ now. 

"You smell nice," he mutters instead, forever courteous. "Like jasmine."

"Thank you," she whispers, and huddles into his warmth, keeping his injuries in mind. He groans lowly as he stretches his arm up, and wraps it around her shoulders. He smells nice too, like warm amber things- vanilla and whiskey. She'll stay quiet though, keep the scent to herself.

Allison sits in the beanbag chair, says, "My dad is taking us to France."

She says, "Wolves are one thing, we can deal with that. But fairies?"

She says, "I can't do this. I thought I could, but…"

They host a going-away party, and Lydia tries not to think about her pack all leaving her. She gave them her blessing after all. Jackson, Danny, now Allison. 

She's the last lion left. 

Derek comes out to join her where she's sitting on the fire escape, eating chocolate cake. He's got a beer in one hand and something pink in the other. 

"Pomegranate martini," he says, gifting it to her. "I figured it's that kind of day."

"You know how to make pomegranate martinis?" She asks, then takes a sip. It's perfect. 

Derek shrugs with a small enigmatic smile. "I bought a recipe book for alcoholic beverages," he admits and from inside they can hear Stiles howling with laughter, proof they're being overheard. "You aren't the type to just drink what's on tap, and Stiles makes a point to look up obscure drinks to annoy me, so."

She smiles at him, their fearless pack leader, and thinks of that phrase from Shakespeare- _some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them_. She thanks him for the drink wordlessly. 

"Are you going to be okay?" He asks suddenly, and Lydia looks at him in surprise and curiosity. 

"What do you mean?" She asks. She puts her cake aside. 

Derek raises an eyebrow. "Allison's leaving, isn't she? Are you going to be okay?"

Lydia shrugs. "She's your pack. I should be asking you that."

Derek smiles again; it's easier for him to do that now, even with the horribleness around them. "She was your pack first, though."

She turns her head to look at him, demanding and unblinking. He stares back impassively, but with something akin to respect. Lydia didn't realize Derek knew, just thought he thought her a strong-willed, bratty little girl playing house with people capable of killing her. She didn't realize Derek recognized a fellow predator. 

She tilts her head, says, "I'd rather my pack be safe than in danger, and if this will bring her safety, then so be it. I can protect this town for them." She thinks for a bit, then turns back to Derek. " _We_ can protect this town for them."

Derek nods, a furrow in his brow. "That's a promise," he says, and Lydia knows he's talking to those who can hear inside. "We'll protect this town, all of us."

⊰

Allison's parting gift to Lydia is a small bag with silver rings. There's too many for one person.

"The other pair is for Stiles," Allison rasps, red-rimmed from tears. "Both of you."

Lydia takes out one of the rings and notices they're not rings at all. They're claws, claws you slip onto your finger to cover your nails, made of silver with a fleur de lis engraved on them. When Lydia touches the tip, she hisses as blood comes to the surface of her pricked finger.

"You can dip them in wolfsbane," Allison says, "and they're sharp enough to use like knives."

Allison hugs her, and says, "Be safe, please, Lydia."

Lydia wonders, later, if Allison had a feeling she knew what was coming, and if she did, Lydia doesn't know how to feel- whether it was self-preservation, like Jackson, or willful pack abandonment. 

After all, only some are built to live this life, a life of fur and macabre and moonlight.

⊰

The Alphas' first warning comes with dead forest animals, mutilated beyond salvage, blood on the leaves and twigs. 

There's a sharp triangle mark carved into each animal's flesh, a sharper version of Derek's tattoo, a taunt and a mimicry. 

The Sheriff makes noise to instill another curfew, ages another five years witnessing the carnage, mutters about serial killers always practicing on animals first.

The second warning comes with the loft being trashed, windows shattered and floorboards torn up, furniture clawed and gutted. The smell of urine is thick in the air, and in blood- "deer blood, thank god," Scott mutters- are the words, _wanna play, derek?_

"Okay," Stiles mutters, "this just went all _War Games_ on us. At least we know they're nerds."

Isaac growls, "They _peed_ on everything," and sounds like he did when he was freshly turned, angry and vengeful. "What kind of _sick people_ -"

"That's exactly it," Derek interrupts. "These aren't humans, not anymore. They've been too violent, they've killed too much. They're more wolf than man, at this point."

Scott frowns. "They've lost their humanity?"

"The majority of it," Derek nods. "And they're coming either to get us to join them, or kill us."

Stiles, because Lydia loves that he's a cynic as much as she hates it, mutters, "My money's on the latter."

⊰

The government is made aware of Beacon Hills because of the massacre. FBI, SWAT, and the DOD are visitors for a while, inspecting and interviewing and calling Beacon Hills a "dangerous place to visit," as if a small town in North California was some sort of terrorist outpost. 

When the Alpha pack enters a community college, and their third warning comes in the form of multiple murdered students and faculty, with the words _little red, little red, come to grandma's house_ , the military step in and move in permanently, and evacuate 99% of the civilians. 

Beacon Hills becomes a military outpost, with curfews and rules and soldiers watching every move. 

Lydia doesn't think they accounted for how stealthy werewolves are. More murders crop up, the same triskele embedded in walls and floors and flesh. 

Lydia's throat becomes red and raw from the screams, becomes pissed off by the never ending voices, harder to control now that death is everywhere, and the always present itch between her shoulder blades. 

She just needs this to be over.

⊰

She gets called by some soldier about her mother being attacked, being used like a mouse by a cat, being chased down the street like prey before being pounced on and _mauled_. 

Her body in the hospital bed is small, fragile, pale. She looks like a feather, like an angel. Her legs are wrapped in gauze and casts, kept massaged by a circulatory machine. 

"She survived, but we think there might be lasting brain damage," the doctor says.

"There's no way of knowing until she wakes up," the doctor says. 

"She may never walk again," the doctor says. 

She stares at her papier-mâché mother, angles and lines and fragile bones, and feels something _dark_ fill her bloodstream. For the first time, she wants to do more than cherry bombs in lockers and purple dye in bath soap. 

She wants to feel blood gush down her throat, she wants to tear throats with her bare hands and _skin_ something with her _teeth_. She wants to be the one to stop heartbeats, to bring war down on the warmongers. 

She turns to Derek with bloodlust in her veins and a promise in her eyes. This is the crossed line. This is the deed that shouldn't have been done. And now the Alpha pack had signed their own defeat, in fire and blood and ragnarok. 

 

_a black horse; and he who rode it had a pair of scales in his hands_

When he was a child, Scott's father left them in the middle of the night. Scott remembers this, because it was the night before the trip they were going to take to Disneyland for his birthday. He was eight years old. 

When he tells Stiles, Stiles wants to go out and find him, drag him home, and kill him for Scott. Scott doesn't think Stiles is joking, even for an eight year old kid. 

Instead of killing his dad, Stiles comes over with his mom, and they go upstairs while their moms stay downstairs and drink wine and cry, because Scott has seen those chick flicks and that's what women do when their husbands or whatever leave. 

Stiles climbs into bed with Scott and cuddles into him, grabbing Scott like a doll and fixing his posture until Scott's nose is pressed into Stiles' neck and his arms are wrapped around Scott's body tightly, tight enough for Scott to worry about needing his inhaler. 

Stiles says, quietly, "Fuck him," and the shock of him saying _that_ word makes Scott laugh and laugh until his laughing isn't funny anymore so he starts to cry. He cries and cries into Stiles' neck while Stiles hums some song in a weird language, tone-deaf and perfect, and he cries until he falls asleep. 

When he wakes up the next morning, he asks, "What if I deserve it? Like, what if I deserve the asthma and the chicken pox and my dad leaving?"

Stiles punches him in the stomach, lightly to not aggravate his breathing. "Idiot," he says. "Kids don't deserve bad things, Scott. Your dad was just a dumbo who didn't see you're totally awesome and your mom's smokin'."

"Ew, you think my mom's cute?" Scott asks, wrinkling his nose. 

Stiles laughs, a loud childish giggle. "Ew, no! But like, adults might, so yeah. Besides, she's your mom, moms aren't s'pposed to be cute. Moms have _germs_."

When Stiles' mom dies when Stiles is thirteen, both of them in middle school, Scott watches helplessly as his best friend starts having panic attacks, gets mandated to therapy by the doctor, gets diagnosed with some huge word called selective mutism. 

He sits with Stiles in his room, surrounded by posters and pictures and color yet empty of life, and says, "You didn't deserve this Stiles, and I'm so sorry."

Stiles just stares into space, and doesn't say anything. Scott keeps talking. "I know you're thinking that, Stiles, and you're wrong. Kids don't deserve bad things, remember? You told me that. And I'm telling you that now. 'Cause you need to hear it. It wasn't your fault, and you didn't deserve this, and your mom didn't deserve this, so-"

He stops talking when Stiles slams his hand on the desk, eyes bright with anger and tears, and Scott doesn't know what to do when Stiles starts to cry, silently, like he does everything nowadays. 

He gets up and walks over to his brother, where he's bent in half over his chair, panicking and crying and not breathing. 

"Stiles, breathe," Scott says, rubbing his back. "You're okay, you're fine. Just breathe."

When Stiles falls asleep, nose pressed into Scott's neck and Scott's arms wrapped tight around his back, he returns the favor from years ago, and stays awake to sing songs in Spanish while Stiles sleeps fretfully. 

He's almost fourteen when Scott's mom calls crying from the hospital, tells Scott to get there immediately, and Scott has never pedaled his bike faster. 

His mom is waiting in the lobby, and she stops him before walking into the hall where Stiles is waiting and says, "Scott, I need you to understand. John is… sick. Really sick. It's called alcohol poisoning, do you know what that is?"

Scott moves his head like a bobble head. "Sort of. Isn't it when you get really drunk you pass out?"

"It's a bit more than that. He can _die_ , is what I'm saying, Scott." His mom is nearly silent, her whispers so low. "He's under observation, but Scott… if he does, Stiles goes into the system. So he's a bit worried now. I need you to keep him company, keep him calm. Okay?"

"You need to save him, mom," Scott says, grabbing her shirt. "Mom, you gotta save him."

"We will, cariño," his mom rubs his head, runs her fingers through his hair. "We will fight like hell to keep him here."

Scott pinches her arm for the swear, then says, "I'll take him to the cafeteria for some food."

She grins in relief, says, "I knew I could count on you," and leaves the boys to their own devices. 

Scott takes Stiles to the cafeteria after a one-sidedly verbal argument, and plays it cool when Stiles tell the woman in the till, "Can I have a banana, also?"

It's the first words Stiles has spoken in nearly a year, voice scratchy and tense, like he's expecting Scott to jump him about it, but Scott is fourteen, not dumb. He pretends to ignore what he heard and Stiles relaxes that much more. 

The Sheriff signs a paper that says Stiles can stay with them during his months in rehab, and Stiles loses his selective mutism little by little; the trauma of seeing his dad almost drown in vomit must've made him break his quiet. He talks a little too much now, as if trying to catch up to all the words he hasn't been saying, and grins wide whenever Scott's mom says, "Stiles, please, _slow down_ , _breathe_ between sentences," as if proud he's annoying people again.

Scott thinks it unfair that children are forced to grow up so fast once touched by tragedy. It's in the dark, the sounds of the house settling and Stiles snoring and his mom washing dishes, that Scott vows to always protect his family from anything that threatens their happiness.

⊰

He gets bitten by Peter when he's sixteen, and under the fur and fangs and perpetual rage at his fucked up life, he feels the promise he made two years ago cement into his soul.

He feels the need to protect Stiles, and his mom, and the Sheriff like he needs to breathe, something tangible he can feel his body doing, something he needs to survive. 

"I'm gonna kill Peter," Scott tells Stiles one day in the gym. "He's not alpha anymore, I know that, but if he doesn't get the hell out of the pack, I'm killing him."

Stiles stares at Lydia, an entire room away, and sneers. "I'll help get rid of the body. Chopped up in little _pieces_."

Scott has stopped worrying about how the werewolf in him has bled into Stiles, into his mom, into Allison. They've gone too far in this game to go back, have become different people. Scott doesn't think he'll ever be comfortable with death, and killing, no matter how many times Derek says they're predators, but his anger will always allow for that change to reside in him. 

"Bilinski! McCall! Stop gossiping like little girls and get on the court!" Finstock shouts, breaking his musing. 

⊰

Lydia solves Jackson's scaly problem, and the day after, shows up in Derek's loft, perfectly pristine and smelling like flowers and cinnamon. In moments like this, where the sun is slanted in the windows just enough to make Lydia's cheekbones sharper than daggers, Scott can understand Stiles' obsession.

Lydia takes one look around her, at the rag-tag mêlée of Scott, Stiles, Isaac, Allison, Derek, and Peter, and sniffs in mild disappointment.

She says, "Well, I wanted to come and see what my prospects were, but it seems like all I've got to look forward to is _disappointment_ ," but her heartbeat skips, and Scott feels an inordinate amount of pleasure that she likes them enough to not consider them disappointments. 

Peter opens his mouth to say… probably nothing of worth, but Lydia points in his direction. "If you speak to me, or speak at all while I'm in your presence," she warns, voice suddenly dark and cold, and Scott knows she _belongs_ here. "I will chop off your balls with a rusty knife and gag you with them."

Scott sees Stiles adjust himself discreetly, unashamed even in a pack of werewolves, and has the added bonus of seeing Peter cower back into whatever shadows rats go into. 

Derek snorts, and just like that, they have a new pack member, and Scott adds a name to his list of people to bleed and die for.

⊰

Scott doesn't want to kill the Fae. He's among the minority, he and Isaac, that want to see what they want first. 

"You can't live life talking to every threat you come across, Scott!" Derek shouts, "that's the way people die!"

Scott stands his ground, says, "Maybe they don't want to kill everything in its path, Derek, have you ever thought of that?"

"Scotty," Stiles interrupts the shouting match, face creased in concern. "The only time threats want to talk is during a villainous monologue, dude. I don't think they'll just see the error of their ways and pack up to go."

"We'll never know if we don't try!" He says again, cornered and helpless and like the bleeding heart he is, he adds, "Maybe they just want help."

Derek snorts, and then growls when Stiles kicks him in the thigh. Stiles turns and says, "Historically the Fae have some grudge match against werewolves, Scott. Kind of like witches. Their thing is the only good 'wolf is a dead 'wolf."

Scott finally agrees without agreeing, silently making plans to go talk to them before Derek starts in with his bloodthirsty ways.

⊰

He ends up getting Lydia kidnapped after a conversation with a Druid goes horribly wrong. The Druid's eyes were thinly veiled distaste while Scott spoke of the pack, but when he mentioned Lydia being a banshee, their eyes grew wide and a richly sweet smell permeated Scott's nose.

Avarice, he later found out, smelled like licorice. 

Lydia is kept with the Fae for a week in human time, but closer to two hundred years in the other world. By the time they find her and fight for her escape, Scott can see how much it's changed her, in subtle ways. 

She stands taller, she's stronger, and there's something inhuman behind her eyes, something that comes out every now and again. She also doesn't complain about the voices anymore. 

"I accepted my gift," she says, but she sounds bitter about it. "They taught me to control it, to hone it. It doesn't control me anymore."

Scott knows she means the hallucinations and night terrors, the uncontrollable spasms and small seizures she gets every time she's about to scream. 

She's settled into herself in two hundred years.

Derek breaks almost every bone in his body when he throws him into various walls as punishment. Scott doesn't try to stop him, not because of fear or anger or to prove a point. It's because it's what he owes. He tried to be fair, and got a packmate put in danger, and now deserves the punishment. Derek's brand of just desserts. 

He feels like Derek let him off lightly when the Fae massacre Beacon Hills, leaving a mass grave of bodies and blood stained earth. They take their fight to the Preserve, where the air rots and the trees die, the soil drying into crumbling clay and dust. The animals leave, the birds fly away. 

"We control _life_ ," the Fae Queene hisses, and it sounds like a clap of thunder. In the human world, she looks like old leather stretched thin over rotting bones. "We can _take it away_."

The fight saps strength and humor, and lightheartedness, turning them into shadows of themselves, but Scott fights hard, and then even harder when Derek kills the Queene, leaving the Court vulnerable. 

Beacon Hills gets baptized in blood, and the animals come back and the birds make their nests in fresh trees, but they're all changed, left copies of the real thing. 

⊰

Allison leaves, and Scott will always love her, and Isaac will always need her, but there's that one quote- if you love something, let it go. 

Stiles comes up to him after, wraps an arm around his shoulders, and says, "She'll be okay. Safer. Lydia's calling Jackson, she'll get him to look after her."

Scott blinks. "Jackson?"

"Yeah, they're still in touch, those crazy kids." Stiles shrugs. "True love, y'know?" 

Scott discreetly sniffs the air, but doesn't smell any pain or hurt or jealousy. He smiles wryly, and says, "What about your ten year plan?"

Stiles barks out a laugh, surprised. "Um, yeah, about that. Lydia's fucking terrifying?" He asks, like it's a question, and Scott has to laugh. "I'm more protective of her now than infatuated. I'll always love her, but it's a different kind of love now. I just want to see her happy, and if that means she's with a scaly meathead a thousand miles away, as long as he's treating her right and I don't have to get out the crossbow and throwing knives, I'll support her."

Scott thinks about Allison, and understands his brother. He'll always have a place in his heart dedicated to her, where she curled up and made a home in it, but he has to think of her happiness before her own, and her safety before his own.

"Besides," Stiles says, "I have something of a new ten year plan, now," and cackles as he runs away when Scott tries to catch him to explain. 

⊰

Scott's mom moves into the hospital, where they've reinforced it with steel and arms and soldiers with things like _bazookas_. 

Scott makes plans with his pack, watches Lydia harden her heart and declare war in her own way, watches how Stiles stops sleeping in order to plan and prepare and stays at Derek's loft more often than his own home in order to better arm himself. Isaac becomes quieter, more battle-ready, vigilant and tense, and there's the smell of a storm on the way. It makes the air buzz and the static electricity in the air catch on clothing and the fridge and skin. 

Derek walks up to him and places a hand on his shoulder. "You won't try to argue we need to talk to them first, will you?"

It's taken Scott ages to understand his alpha, just as it's taken ages for his alpha to understand how to be a leader, but now Scott knows when Derek is telling a joke and when he's being serious, so he quips back, "I don't know, I think I can really make them see where they've gone wrong with just my dulcet tones."

"You just wanted the room to know you knew the word 'dulcet'!" Stiles' voice interrupts from upstairs in the loft bedroom. 

Scott rolls his eyes. "Shut up and keep napping, Stiles!"

"Come make me, mom!" Stiles yells back, then falls silent before saying, "Derek, why do you have pink, frilly _panties_ among your boxers?"

Scott laughs when Derek takes the stairs twice at a time, cursing loudly. He keeps laughing even as the squawking and sounds of a tussle from upstairs make the pack meeting late.

⊰

"This has the makings of a Irish pub brawl," Stiles groans, head covering half the map where he'd sprawled. "And I should know, my family on my mom's side is Irish. This is gonna end up with someone being gutted by a pint of beer."

Isaac blinks, then says, "I don't think we'll be amiably drinking before fighting, Stiles. After, maybe."

"That's a plan," Stiles says with a finger gun in Isaac's direction. "All of the celebratory alcohol. Like, buckets of it."

"Alright," Derek interrupts, deadly serious and glare in place. "Tomorrow we take back our territory. Tomorrow, we go to war. I understand you're nervous, but we're strong, we're together-"

"And we're fucking _pissed as hell_ ," Stiles adds, brow furrowed in anger.

Derek nods. "And we're fucking pissed as hell," he adds, ignoring the snorts from round the room, "so they've got shit on us. We got this in the bag. So don't worry, get some sleep, and we'll convene here tomorrow at dawn."

"Well, it's not _Churchill_ , but it'll do," Stiles says sarcastically, and Lydia says, " _It'll do_? It sounded like something from a seventies' teen gang movie."

Derek snaps his fangs, elongated in an absent threat, and they disperse. Scott walks off with Isaac, but before he does, he shares a bear hug with Lydia, who's so small she fits into his chest with the top of her head brushing his chin. He still marvels something so strong could come from something so petite. 

The hug between Scott and Stiles is long, and stays clenched as Scott drags him in and keeps dragging him closer until they're practically melded into one human being, noses tucked into necks and arms tight around backs. 

"Kids don't deserve this, huh?" Stiles whispers, so low Scott is sure he's the only one who's heard, and he sniffs a wet laugh. 

"Yeah, Stiles. Life's unfair like that," Scott whispers back, squeezes tighter until Isaac touches his shoulder. 

"We've got to go before curfew, Scott, or we'll get dragged into interrogation and not make it out for hours," Isaac says, but he sounds sorry. 

Scott leaves with one last bro-hug from Derek, who takes the time to rub their necks and hair before letting them leave, and Scott leaves Stiles and Lydia looking small in the loft, and for the first time, wonders if this is the right choice.

 

_authority was given to them… to kill with sword, and famine, and by the wild beasts of the earth_

When Stiles was eleven, his Halloween costume was a scythe and a cloak. He had more fun scaring younger kids into believing he was actually Hades than getting candy. 

_I'm Death_ , he would say in a deep, slow voice, _and one day, I'll make you suffer a horrible, painful one._

He liked it so much he wore it almost every night, and would hide in dark corners like a hoodlum, waiting for someone to come walking down the street to scare them. He did it until his mother got frontotemporal dementia.

Stiles threw the costume away, and thought if playing with fire got you burnt, he was never gonna touch another flame.

He stares at the scene before him, the burnt out husk of a house, the corpse probably still warm on the floor, the panic of a werewolf fight, and lobs the bomb in his hand to the rabid animal in their way.

He watches Peter burn- _again_ , his brain adds cruelly, and wants to laugh at the broken promise of his youth- and stares at the picture, doesn't let his eyes water at the smell of burnt fur and flesh. Nearby, he can hear Jackson retch, but doesn't think him weak for it.

He watches the body burn until it stops moving, dead on the ground, and he can tell when the Alpha power turns to Derek, next of kin.

 _I'm Death_ , he thinks now, _and I have made you suffer._

⊰

He goes mute for months after his mother's death, goes willingly to therapy, takes pills for depression, for his anxiety, for his ADHD. He allows his father to take him to speech therapy, but never says anything during the sessions.

He listens to the kind of emo music that makes parents _worry_ about their kids, then laughs bitterly, and silently, at his own hubris. He has a panic attack immediately after.

He sleeps over consecutive nights more often at Scott's and yet less often at Scott's. He sleeps over the nights where he can hear his father cry wetly into his drink, sounding like he's choking and drowning and swallowing and sniffing all at the same time. 

He becomes vocal in a hospital cafeteria, as Scott is trying to distract him with food, knowing it's worked before, and asks for something banal. 

He was vocal before that, when he dialed for ambulance, for his dad. He refused to become death for his father, too.

⊰

Stiles learns about Lydia's kidnapping, about the Fae Court, and sharpens his knives, every single one of them. 

"Time works differently there," Derek says, and that makes him bare his human teeth like fangs. "For all we know, Lydia could've been there for a thousand years now."

Stiles grits his teeth and says, "Shut up, _shut up,_ " and glares at Derek right back when his gaze cuts to Stiles, angry. "She's not gonna be there any longer than she has to be. That's a promise."

He goes home and shovels pizza mindlessly down his gullet as he reads up on everything he can find about the Fae. He makes eight cups of coffee and mainlines six, getting a second wind at three a.m.

Stiles doesn't sleep for a week, collapses midway for four hours and wakes up propped up on his headboard with Derek looking over his work. At first, Stiles thinks Derek's going to say something about him not sleeping, but instead, he just points at the papers and says, "This is great."

Stiles hums. "I'm getting close. I just have to figure out how to open the gate without needing a guide, because a guide'll mean favors, and Fae hold favors sacred. They kill for unfulfilled ones."

Derek nods. "That would be bad."

Stiles nods. "Yeah," he says in a light voice that holds no humor, "funny how our lives are so crappy we're not even fazed by threats of death anymore, huh?"

Derek's eyes when he looks at him are pained and guilty, but Stiles doesn't really feel like comforting him. Stiles doesn't feel like doing anything except finding Lydia.

⊰

The Faerie Queene is tall and regal, perfect in every way as she sits crowned in gems and diamonds and the glow of midsummer stars.

She smiles at them in greeting, as any good host, but the amount of weapons in her presence says her unannounced guests are anything but welcome. 

"What may I do for you, Alpha?" She asks.

Stiles interrupts before Derek can speak, thinks that maybe that was a mistake when the Court titters, but continues sternly. "We've come for our packmate, the Banshee, Lydia Martin. We will not leave without her."

The Queene raises a brow. "High demand. And what will you give me for the girl?"

"Absolutely nothing," Stiles says, and continues with aplomb, "I know how the Fae like favors for favors, and bartering. With all due respect, we'd prefer not to be in your debt."

Her smile is gone, replaced by ice. "But surely I must get something, no?"

The guards with spears and swords step towards them, and the 'wolves tense, Derek going so far as to shift partially, letting his eyes glow and his fangs drip saliva. 

Stiles has to defuse the situation. He thinks of something off the fly, then remembers his mother's favorite book to read to him, remembers _riddles in the dark, stiles_ , and making up riddles at breakfast time. "I have an idea. A game of riddles."

The Queene stares at him. "You? Wish to play riddles with the Faerie Queene?" The laughter is thick in her voice and the whole Court laughs, giggles and chuckling that sound like musical notes in the air.

Scott grabs his elbow and asks, "What are you doing, Stiles," as Isaac says, "You're gonna get us all killed," but Stiles squares his shoulders and tells her, "Three riddles. If you guess all three correctly, then you let us leave unharmed and untouched from your world with our friend, also unharmed and untouched. If you win, you can keep her, and us prisoners for as long as it takes for us to die naturally, without torture."

The pack is tense, subsonic whines and shuffling giving their nerves away, but Stiles tries to be as stiff as possible, even when the Queene's smile turns evil and the Court silences in anticipation. 

"Agreed," she purrs.

Stiles takes a breath, and then changes his face from scared to confident. He grins. It's a dark grin, filled with promise of victory and edged with ferality. 

The Court silences in anticipation of their royal's victory, but the Queene narrows her eyes and tenses.

Stiles kisses his teeth and begins.

⊰

They escape narrowly, the Queene claiming Stiles a cheat, and Lydia finds them in the hubbub, pale and glistening and beautifully otherworldly, but still Lydia down to her core. 

They escape the Court, the bloodthirsty Queene, and breathe a little lighter. Lydia spends an hour in silence, and Stiles can understand the need for quiet. 

"I'm better now," she tells him in the dark of the forest. "They helped me… anchor myself. They taught me how to drown out the voices."

Stiles stares at her. "Did you want to stay? There, with other Fae."

Lydia scoffs. "No. I belong here, with you, with Derek and Scott and Isaac. This is my home. And I'm glad to be back."

Stiles nods and brings her in for a hug, one she would've scorned so long ago, but now clings to with greater strength than before.

"We're all together again," she sniffs and Stiles smiles and sings in a truly horrible falsetto, " _We're all in this together_ -" yelping a laugh when she digs her fingers into the skin below his armpits and tickles.

⊰

After the massacre, Stiles goes to Deaton. It's left the ground stained rust brown, and Stiles is not even sure he'll find the man, considering he's got a habit of nomadism. To Stiles' surprise, he's at his home, a small bungalow with more backyard than house.

Deaton refuses to help, pissed off and scared and showing more emotion than Stiles thought him capable of, considering Stiles had a sneaking suspicion Deaton was actually a cardboard box in disguise. 

"He was really worried," Stiles says. "He kept asking if we knew what we had done, like something was coming for us."

Lydia just flips her hair out of her face when he tells her, after the pack meeting when they're still in the loft. She says, "Leave it to me," and Stiles leaves it to her.

She shows up three days later with five old tomes and a flash drive. She brandishes her spoils with a smirk and a raised brow. 

"Don't ask me where I got this," she says when Derek pokes at a book. "Girl's gotta have some secrets."

They start reading, adjusting for coffee and pee breaks, murmuring in Latin and Greek and both nearly tearing out their hair over the Old English until Derek busts out the hidden talents of a master's thesis on _Beowulf_. 

It takes nearly seventy-three hours, but they finally manage the translation of five spells, jittery on coffee, or tea in Lydia's case, and not enough sleep. 

The spells are basic, just enough for Stiles to be able to hold more than just a spark of magic. 

"I still think this is dangerous," Derek mutters, watching Lydia extract Stiles' blood using the thorn of a hawthorn tree whilst repeating soft lines in Latin. "No, actually, this belongs in the slightly more adult version of _Hocus Pocus_."

"You just made a corny movie reference," Stiles says woozily, trying not to panic at the needle- thorn, what-the-fuck- _ever_ \- piercing his finger. 

Lydia, because she's a witch with a capital B, grins and says, "How attracted to him are you right now?"

Stiles plays along, grins as lasciviously as he can at the moment, and says, "I'm _so_ attracted. Ooh baby, take me now!" He exclaims and chortles when both Lydia and Derek roll their eyes. 

"There," she says suddenly and throws the thorn into the- no joke- actual witch's brew she's bubbling in a pot. "Now I need you to chant the spell, and you're good to start studying actual magic."

⊰

"Stiles, people have _died_ ," his dad reiterates, angry and hurt and so worried. "There are government workers interrogating people. They are speculating _terrorism_ on a worldwide level. And you're running around with your friends acting like this is _summer camp_!"

"I'm being safe!" Stiles shouts, his head half wondering if he'd thrown out every bottle of whiskey in the house.

His dad slams his hands down. "Not safe enough!" He roars, and Stiles has never heard his father sound like that. "And what's worse, you're still lying to me. After all this, after all those murders, even with threats of terrorism, you _still_ are lying to me."

Stiles swallows, feeling the pressure of an oncoming panic attack, and thinks it apt, that he should implode with pressure just as the rest of the town is exploding. 

"I'm sorry, dad," he whispers brokenly. "I wish… I wish I could tell you. But this is safer."

"Safer for whom, Stiles?" His dad asks, and there's a light in his eye that makes Stiles hate himself. "I'm your father, it's my _job_ to protect you."

"And I'm your son," Stiles argues. "It's always been my job to protect you."

He walks upstairs without realizing that that statement is truer than Stiles even realized. He wonders if his father is thinking the same thing. 

⊰

Blood magic is more dangerous than any kind of magic, because it's not considered normal magic. It's not considered natural. It's something taboo, and in some covens, it's abominable. 

Stiles is working with the tools he's been given, and thinks he can't really afford to be choosy at the moment. 

Blood magic is considered taboo because in order to establish ties to the pack, he has to drink their blood on a full moon under a ritual performed by a pack member. It links their lives to his, links his magic to them. In most cases, blood magic is performed under dubious or uninformed consent, causing a stream of violations upon the person. 

But Stiles is working, he reiterates, with the tools they have and what they have time for. 

He stands inside the circle shirtless, drawn with runes in a paste of herbs and blessed water, and when Lydia starts the chant, he picks up the bowl of red.

He feels like he should be more grossed out than he is, but there's a calmness around his shoulders, like for once the world is weightless, like his wings made of wax will turn to actual feathers halfway there. He feels like he could take on anything. 

He drinks slowly, feeling the roil of his stomach and the curdling of his own blood in his veins at the taste and sensation, but feels the strength of magic and the wild ferality of him now, half-wolf half-man. One hundred percent human. 

Lydia finishes the chant breathlessly, as if she too feels it, as if the magic has become airborne, they're all touched by it; it smells like ozone and an oncoming thunderstorm. 

Stiles thinks, _I will make whatever comes suffer._

⊰

"Please, I'm begging you, _please_ , come home," the Sheriff says, eyes wet and face so tired. 

The Alpha pack has destroyed a community college, laid waste to what was already shaken ruins, and Stiles says, "I already live here," as if he's dumber than he is, as if he's still a silly eighteen year old boy and not a pack member with magic in his veins and PTSD-fused night terrors.

The Sheriff breaks a sob, inhales shakily. "You stay here, Stiles, but you've stopped living here a long time ago."

His father's face looks like he's aged decades overnight, his clothes hanging badly off his shoulders, his hair peppered with salt and grey now from stress. Stiles wonders what his dad sees when he looks at him. 

"Alright," Stiles says, and he sags. "Alright, dad. I'm sorry."

His dad packs for Oregon that night, and they plan to leave the next morning. A fresh start, a safer life. His dad can't stop touching him, excited and tired and Stiles says, "I'll drive," and watches his dad sigh in relief, tension drifting away. 

He's back in Beacon Hills four days later, duffel bag of clothing and not much else in Derek's bedroom. It took the military four days to settle in like they've always belonged there. Stiles wants to laugh or cry, or laugh while crying at the idea of these civilians in military garb taking up arms, defending his territory. 

Beacon Hills is his home. Human or not, he knows better than most how to defend it, like any great wolf or lion.

⊰

Derek lets him sleep in his bedroom, the bedroom they'd renovated upstairs after Lydia had raised an eyebrow at the queen sized mattress on the floor of the living room, kissed her teeth, and said, "I'll be right back," and came back with a number for a home renovator and interior designer.

Derek sleeps in the pull-out sofa bed the first week, but moves upstairs when Stiles wakes up screaming, and later, when Stiles almost stabs Derek sleepwalking after Derek tries to wake him.

Lydia moves in after her mother's accident, and Stiles doesn't even argue when she takes up space on the mattress, smelling like jasmine and sandalwood and something feminine, a sort of sweet candy smell.

The three of them make it work, living day after day as roommates, sharing a bed and a kitchen, watching reruns of old tv shows and forcing Lydia to branch out to something other than _The Notebook, Lydia, I swear to god_. They make pillow forts and drink hot chocolate, and it's good, it's so so good that Stiles doesn't want to blink, doesn't even want to pinch himself in case he is dreaming, and the world is going to shit outside, but in Derek's loft, Derek is French-braiding Lydia's hair while Stiles dozes with his feet tucked under Derek's thigh, so he doesn't want to wake up.

Stiles doesn't stop to question his insane luck at being able to sleep, even platonically, with not just one, but two incredibly beautiful human beings. He doesn't because, for the most part, it'd be crude at this point in their friendship, and second, he doesn't want it to end.

He sleeps spooning Lydia to his chest, spooned into Derek's chest, Lydia's fingers interwoven with Derek's in a sort of never ending circle of limbs and warmth. 

⊰

They celebrate Isaac's eighteenth birthday in the loft, by playing video games and eating homemade cake. Stiles tries to pull for hash brownies, but that idea becomes sad when he learns werewolves can never get high.

"I would've gotten you a stripper, man," Scott jokes, "but this town's kinda dead on its feet."

It's a bad joke, but it's enough to make them rib each other and laugh, Stiles making the drum riff noise with the hand motions, which makes him accidentally slap Derek. He quickly moves out of the way before Derek can take his revenge.

It's on Isaac's birthday that Stiles bleeds for the Preserve, and forges blood magic on the earth surrounding them. They stand there and watch Stiles pour out his blood from a cut on his forearm, watches as the air swirls and kicks up. The smell of ozone grows, the electricity sizzling so much it actually snaps, creating blue veins in the air. 

Stiles mutters his incantation, and fights against the earth rebelling, explains his purpose here, explains his situation, and sways violently when the resistance drops so suddenly. 

It's thirty minutes later when he's established ties to every square mile of Beacon Hills and the forests surrounding the town twenty miles in every direction. Lydia helps prop him up to wipe away blood from his nose and eyes. 

"You started crying blood, and then your nose gave," she explains as she makes him chamomile tea. They're in complete darkness, mindful of his migraine, with only a flashlight in Lydia's hand illuminating what she's doing. Stiles' head pounds from even that meager light. "Scott worried," she continues, "but I told him it was expected. Unwanted, but expected. Did it work?"

He hums, falling asleep before answering.

⊰

The night before, after Scott leaves with Isaac and leaves the three of them there, they're tense with the wonder of anticipation. 

"I wasn't kidding about the celebratory beer," Stiles says just to break up the silence. "I will have one, Derek, you can't stop me."

Derek raises a brow and says, "Wouldn't dream of not allowing underage children illegal alcohol," sarcastically. That guy, he's a doof.

Lydia sidles up to Derek and cuddles into him, face practically mashed into his chest and arms wrapped around his waist. Derek isn't even fazed, just hugs her back and sticks his nose in her hair, inhaling not-so-subtly. He opens his eyes and stares at Stiles, until he extends an arm and Stiles gets up from the floor and makes his way to them on the bed.

He fits into Derek's side like a glove, head tilted into his jaw, lips behind his ear. Derek's arm slides up and down his back, and it's enough to make him sleepy.

"I told Jackson before he left that I would end up the victor in this. That I would fight, and fight hard, and make sure to still be standing at the end of it," Lydia says, muffled by Derek's henley.

Derek squeezes them tighter, and moves to cup Lydia's chin. He smiles at her, eyes crinkling the corners, and kisses her lips lightly; a chaste, dry peck like a promise. His promise. He turns to Stiles and Stiles is already there, head tilted up to receive the promise as well, eyes closed. Lydia stretches across Derek's torso to Stiles to kiss him, and they hold each other after, the three of them making that infinite circle of limbs and warmth. 

Stiles smiles softly, and begins singing in Irish, the song his mother used to sing to him when he was having a bad night. The song he sang to Scott the night his dad bounced. The song he sang to his dad in his mind when he was in hospital.

He stares into the dark of the room, supported by two bodies and a headboard, throat working against the clumsy pronunciation, and thinks, _I will make you suffer._

A promise all his own.

 

_there was a great earthquake… and the whole moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth_

The world wakes to a hummingbird heartbeat. The air is gray, and smells like smoke and ozone, something thick and soupy. Electric. 

Derek meets the Alphas in the warehouse district, the only place the military isn't set up, and thinks how many wars have been waged in the Beacon Hills warehouse district. How many were won, how many were close to being lost. He grins to himself; he knows the outcome of today, he knows how this war will end.

The Alpha pack is thirty strong, and angry, appearing like phantoms from the fog, from all directions. Derek's pack is left surrounded on all sides, pressed together back to back in a five pointed star. 

"Well, well," one of the Alphas, thin and lanky and showcasing a multitude of scars all over his body. "If it isn't the big bad wolf." 

Scott growls when one of the Alphas pokes at him, getting close enough to his face to be a breach of personal space. Scott has a moment to think, _that will be the first one I kill_ , and doesn't flinch anymore at the thought. It's what these werewolves deserve, for the terror they've wreaked in his town. 

"I have one question," Lydia asks, for once in sneakers and regular clothing, a t-shirt with a sturdy denim jacket and old jeans. "Which one of you bastards targeted my mom?"

An Alpha in the back grins maliciously, and says, "That bitch gave quite the little chase. Delicious."

Lydia points with the weapon in her hand, a crowbar. "I will have a sick amount of pleasure getting your blood all over my French manicure."

"Came here to kick ass and drink milk," Stiles drawls, unconcerned smirk on his face. "And I never had a glass of milk in the first place."

The fight starts when a 'wolf bends too close to Isaac, and snaps his fangs; Stiles slams the side of his face with his metal bat in retaliation, taking out an Argent gun and shooting him in the face. They made the decision with Derek that only humans and Derek himself could kill, to avoid accidental Alpha transference, but Derek didn't tell them to go easy either. 

The world narrows down to sensation: the pain of claws raking _through_ clothes and _into_ flesh, the smell of arterial blood spray misting in the air, ozone from the thunderstorm still looming, waiting to fall. The world narrows to the sounds of Stiles yelling incomprehensible swears, of Lydia's banshee shrieks, short and blipped, enough to deafen shortly and disarm totally. It narrows to pained animal yelps and bone breaking.

There's a buzzing in the air, small like a mosquito, in his ear, enough to fill him with a determination that they will win.

The war doesn't take long, less than an hour they spend in as close to complete silence as they can afford, to avoid civilian- _military_ \- casualties. They will have enough bodies to find tomorrow without discovering their demise today. 

Derek rends viscera from throat, near feral and wolf-wild, humanity half-lost deep within the gleam in his red eyes. Red like blood, like the dawning sun, like Stiles' shirt and Lydia's hair and Scott's damp skin and Isaac's converse sneakers. The symbol of death, world ending. Apocalypse. 

Their victory. 

It's near the end when Derek can hear the metallic buzz, now not unlike keys on a wire, fill the air, and the smell of ozone saturate into actual rain clouds, thick and black. There are blue-white veins of lightning and the clash of thunder and Stiles screams, "Guys now!"

The buzzing gets louder, becomes the drone of a jet before it culminates in a long chorus of agonized wails, the Alpha pack all panicking as their insides liquefy and boil to extreme temperatures.

Their screaming is cut short as Stiles raises an arm, palm outstretched, before closing it into a fist. As one, they explode, leaving nothing but soaked clothing and shoes.

The clouds break into rainfall, warm and fat droplets washing away steaming blood from the asphalt and from their skin. 

The fight takes less than an hour, the war seems to last an entire decade. Scott's resetting his dislocated ankle with barely a grimace, and Stiles is receiving aid from Lydia. His face has a gash from eyebrow to neck to shoulder. It missed his jugular by what Derek assumes is a couple centimeters. 

There is no evidence of life from the Alpha pack, and his own pack is exhausted, Isaac the only one up and walking to make sure the ones still left relatively whole are really, truly dead.

It seems anticlimactic, almost boring, once the adrenaline fades to leave them yawning. All this buildup for a disappointment. Derek shakes off the thought and looks at his pack. His survivors, his family. 

"I need like, twenty showers," Stiles grouses, tense and teary eyed from the pain of his wound, but angry enough to ignore it. 

Lydia stares at her broken finger, and says while Isaac sets it as painlessly as possible, "I call dibs on first shower."

"Isaac and I can just go to the hospital and use the showers there," Scott says. "I'm not waiting to get this gunk out." He slaps away something that looks like intestine from his shoulder.

Derek looks at the carnage, and hears birdsong in the distance, some sort of pigeon. He smiles softly, in relief. "We won," he says. 

They won. Like lions and wolves and wild things, they fought and won.

 

_there will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the old order of things has passed away_

Death follows Justice follows Conquest follows War follows Death. 

So all things turn, so all things renew, and begin again. The earth does not end to never reform again, for what use is death without rebirth? The world turns on, and the cycle continues, and the apocalypse is a slow wheel of small events that allow for large events to transpire. 

An infinite circle, one of limbs and warmth.

**Author's Note:**

> First TW fic, as it were. I'm a bit nervous as to the reception. It definitely probably has a crap ton of mistakes, and it's probably really bad lol but oh well there you go, it's out there now. 
> 
> The italicized excerpts, as well as the title, came from the Book of Revelations in the King James Bible, where you can find the horsemen mythology, as well as the full extent of the apocalypse. It's quite a riveting read, if a bit doom and gloom. Seven horns and seven eyes and oceans of blood and all that. 
> 
> I realized halfway through I was creating this weird ménage a trois with Derek, Stiles, and Lydia, and I assure you I had no intention of going there, but the muse was like, no yeah, go there, platonic three way buddies. So. That's awkward.
> 
> I had reason for choosing the characters I did for their respective horsemen alternates, although some were flimsier than others, I admit.  
> I always wanted Stiles to be Death, because canonically he's kind of the little budding sociopath, always willing to kill/ask to kill characters, always one of the first to distrust new characters and opt for the less merciful option.  
> Scott was easy as well. Scott was Famine/Justice bc I don't like so many of the choices his character makes. I liked the idea of Scott during season one, before crap writing made him into what I think is a badly developed character. And so many of his choices earlier in the show (I stopped watching halfway through season 4 bc of disappointment) ended up in someone hurt or dead, that I couldn't NOT make him Famine, to make him accountable for some of the shit he's done lol, but also Justice (the alt. title) because of his merciful and always-willing-to-accept-you way of thinking.  
> War was Lydia because it's described as the red horseman, and I really like Lydia's character and think she's more than capable of kicking ass and winning wars.  
> And Derek was Conquest, one, because I wanted him to not be the negative connotation of Conquest (Pestilence) and two, he deserves to win at least once, damn it. I will never forgive the writers for the disservice they did to Derek Hale.  
> Isaac isn't a horseman, because I realized halfway through (I'm a bit of an idiot) there's five pack members in this fic and only four horsemen, and realized AFTER writing this, as a way to include him I guess, I created a "blue curtains symbolize depression" moment where Isaac goes to see if the Alphas are actually dead. In the mythos, Hades actually follows Death around picking up the souls Death puts down. So I guess I subconsciously made Isaac Hades.  
> Peter's not in this in any detailed way because fuck him.


End file.
